Amazon Product Advertising API Developer's Manual page 110

Product Advertising API Developer Guide
<Ancestors>
<BrowseNode>
<BrowseNodeId>283155</BrowseNodeId>
<Name>Books</Name>
</BrowseNode>
</Ancestors>
</BrowseNode>
</Ancestors>
</BrowseNode>
</Ancestors>
<Children>
<BrowseNode>
<BrowseNodeId>11233</BrowseNodeId>
<Name>Anthropology</Name>
</BrowseNode>
<BrowseNode>
<BrowseNodeId>11242</BrowseNodeId>
<Name>Archaeology</Name>
</BrowseNode>
<BrowseNode>
<BrowseNodeId>3048861</BrowseNodeId>
<Name>Children's Studies</Name>
</BrowseNode>
</Children>
</BrowseNodes>
Traversing down the tree is easy enough: select the browse node ID that is relevant and repeat the
BrowseNodeLookup operation until you descend to the appropriate browse node.
Traversing up the tree is similar. Although the
the complete ancestral lineage of the subject browse node, there is a limitation: the request only returns
one parent browse node for each node. That is, if a node has more than one parent, the response will
only show one of the parent nodes. Which one it returns is arbitrary. For that reason, you might want to
traverse up the browse node hierarchy one level at a time.
Related Topics
• BrowseNodes Response Group (p. 219)
Finding a Node to Start Your Search
Traversing up or down the browse node hierarchy is easy enough. The question is, where do you start?
In the US locale alone, there are over 120,000 nodes and those nodes are changing constantly. Fortunately,
there are multiple ways to find the browse node where you can start your search:
• Many high level browse nodes are listed in the Browse Nodes Values section of the Product Advertising
API Reference.
• The BrowseNodes response group returns browse nodes. You can use this response group with the
following operations: ItemSearch (p.
• On www.amazon.com, search for an item that is similar to the one you want and then copy the browse
node out of the URL.
As an example, let's see how you might find listings for a horse bridle. None of the top product categories
(search indices) relate directly to horses. So, let's use ItemSearch and the BrowseNodes response
groups to find a browse node that is associated with horse bridles.
Finding Items Using Browse Nodes
BrowseNodeLookup (p. 165)
196), and SimilarityLookup (p.
API Version 2011-08-01
103
operation, by default, returns
206).